Place-based Learning Project-based Learning

Supporting Educators and Schools

with Collaborative Consulting and Resources

to Engage and Optimize Student Learning

Place-based Learning Project-based Learning

Supporting Educators and Schools

with Collaborative Consulting and Resources

to Engage and Optimize Student Learning

James Lewicki

James Lewicki is recognized as a national expert in place-based and project-based learning. He brings to his collaborative work many years of experiences working closely with over 150 schools - from small to large, rural to urban, and elementary to high school - across 20 states. He appreciates all that it takes for a team of educators, students, families, and community members to create and sustain an engaging and thriving school community.

James taught for 17 years as a K-12 public school teacher. He was a Wisconsin Teacher of the Year finalist, receiving a prestigious Kohl Fellowship for outstanding innovative teaching, and was Crawford County Conservation Teacher of the Year. After years of teaching, he had the honor of being a school leader twice. Recently, a principal for a K-5 Fine Arts School and then as a principal for a K-8 Place-based School. Prior to his teaching work, James was a YMCA Camp Director for 8 years and Wilderness Instructor for the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS).

Lewicki has an Masters Degree in Education from the University of Wisconsin- LaCrosse, an M.S. in Outdoor Education Administration from George Williams College, a B.S. in Social Sciences from The Evergreen State College, and an A.A. in Outdoor Recreation Leadership from Colorado Mountain College.

Available for a quick consult, professional development, speaking engagement, or a longer consulting endeavor, he can be reached at: jameslewicki@earthlink.net or texted at 608-632-4752.

Get in Touch!

Want to know more about Place-based and Project-based learning?

Is there an issue or a question that needs an immediate response or timely resource?

I am always available for a free consult by a call, email, or text. I love to hear what great ideas are emerging and collaborate on those everyday challenges to implement those great ideas!

- James

Place-based Learning

The Harvard Graduate School of Education addressed the power of place-based learning in its monograph, Learning in Place: (Click on "To Know the Joy" cover for your gifted copy!)

Pedagogy of place brings school and community together on a common pathway dedicated to stewardship and life-long learning. It is teaching by using one’s landscape, family, and community surroundings as the educational foundation. Significant learning takes place outdoors and in the community. This community expands outward from local landscape and home, to regional realities, to international issues. In coming to know one’s place, one comes to know what is fundamental to all places. (1)

Place-based learning is, at its core, a personal journey. Each student redefines their relationships with the land, with the people, with the community through an increased understanding of home driven by new purpose. Most critically, education begins and ends with the people that carry it out. As noted educator, Francisco Guajardo, claimed in his work with the Llano Grande project in South Texas along the Rio Grande: "Relationships, that's where educational reform begins. Relationships: building up trust; building up commitments; giving students and teachers and community people an opportunity to believe, to create change, to try something new. All this starts with one person getting to know another person -- listening, talking, taking the time."

The Rural School and Community Trust (www.ruraledu.org) arrived at the following 7 points they deemed essential in place-based education.

1) The school and community actively collaborate to make the local place a good one in which to learn, work, and live.

2) Students do sustained academic work that draws upon and contributes to the place in which they live. They practice new skills and responsibilities, serving as scholars, workers, and citizens in their community.

3) Schools mirror the democratic values they seek to instill, arranging their resources so that every child is known well and every child’s participation, regardless of ability, is encouraged and valued.

4) Decision-making about the education of the community’s children is shared, informed by expertise both in and outside the school.

5) All participants, including teachers, students, and community members, expect excellent effort from each other and review their joint progress regularly and thoughtfully.

6) Multiple measures and public input enlarge assessments of student performance.

7) The school and community support students, their teachers, and their adult mentors in these new roles.

The Buck Institute (www.bie.org) has an extensive library of research collected on this area of curriculum; e.g. inquiry, problem, project, and place based learning.

* One meta-analysis cited is: Ravitz, J. (2008). Introduction: Summarizing Findings and Looking Ahead to a New Generation of PBL Research. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning, 3(1), 4-11. Available at: http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/ijpbl/vol3/iss1/2/

* An extensive collection of place-based projects can be found at www.promiseofplace.orgthat archives academic success and community connections across America.

* Esposito, Lauren. “Where to Begin? Using Place-Based Writing to Connect Students with Their Local Communities.” The English Journal, vol. 101, no. 4, National Council of Teachers of English, 2012, pp. 70–76, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41415476.

* Smith, Gregory A. “Place-Based Education: Learning to Be Where We Are.” The Phi Delta Kappan, vol. 83, no. 8, Phi Delta Kappa International, 2002, pp. 584–94, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20440205.

* Scheuerman, Richard, et al. “Sharing the Fire: Place-Based Learning with Columbia Plateau Legends.” The English Journal, vol. 99, no. 5, National Council of Teachers of English, 2010, pp. 47–54, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27807191.

* Olson, Ruth, and Mark Wagler. “Afield in Wisconsin: Cultural Tours, Mobile Learning, and Place-Based Games.” Western Folklore, vol. 70, no. 3/4, Western States Folklore Society, 2011, pp. 287–309, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24551260.

* Gruenewald, David A. “The Best of Both Worlds: A Critical Pedagogy of Place.” Educational Researcher, vol. 32, no. 4, [American Educational Research Association, Sage Publications, Inc.], 2003, pp. 3–12, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3700002.

* Beam, Carey, and Carrie Schwier. “Learning in Place: The Teaching Archivist and Place-Based Education.” Archival Issues, vol. 39, no. 1, Midwest Archives Conference, 2018, pp. 7–25, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44982029.

* Switzer, Callin. “MIDDLE SCHOOL: USING PLACE-BASED INQUIRY TO INSPIRE AND MOTIVATE FUTURE SCIENTISTS.” Science Scope, vol. 37, no. 5, National Science Teachers Association, 2014, pp. 50–58, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43691501.

(1) Ulichny, P., C. Fontaine, V. Perrone. Rural Trust Assessment Monograph. Cambridge, MA, Rural School and Community Trust Research and Evaluation Program, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 1999.

"The Best Tools for Lesson Design." - Wisconsin Teacher

WHAT WORKS WELL for

OUTSTANDING TEACHERS

Lesson Planning Tools, Questions, and Skills

By James Lewicki (www.jameslewickieducation.com)

Fellow Teachers,

I taught elementary and middle school for 17 years in SW Wisconsin. Before teaching, I was a year-round YMCA Camp Director. After being a Camp Director and Teacher, I have coached hundreds of amazing teachers across America. And even, for a few years, I was principal of a K-5 and then K-8 elementary school. Today, I continue to work with schools as I share what works well and co-facilitate with teachers their own pathways forward.

What follows are tools, questions, and skills to design thoughtful lessons, in any subject. Time and time again, I have witnessed master teachers employing some version of these tools, utilizing a variety of these questions, as they shape powerful skill development.

Tools

· A tool -- placed in the hands of a great teacher – will accomplish great work.

· A tool embodies learning theory and instructional traditions, what works well.

· Tool deployment activates a teacher’s personalized, teaching style.

Questions

· Asking students questions is foundational inquiry. A good question opens doors. When you determine to ask the questions, why you are asking it, and how you ask the question become the genius of the teaching moment.

Project Idea

· A good project idea addresses many questions!

Social Skill

· A social skill embeds for the student, becoming long-lasting learning transfer, when used again and again, and again as a student’s learning style and capacity matures.

Verbs

· The verbs of learning are the sequences, the steps of doing projects, conducting experiments, realizing understanding, performing, demonstrating, and presenting.

Integrated into a whole, and activated by inquiry, passion, and curiosity these tools, questions, project ideas, social skills, and verbs of learning become powerful for the student.

I have seen this occur in hundreds of classrooms, time and time again. I trust that these tools and questions, used with your passion -- deployed wisely – will make a rewarding difference with your students.

Thank you for your valued work with students!

James

Permission to use and share with other educators

Please cite: www.jameslewickieducation.com

What is a Learning Ecosystem?

A learning ecosystem is connections. Our job as educators is to create the conditions for a wide range of interconnected and productive connections (ecosystem) to take place between:

· students and students

· students and content

· students and process

· students and teachers

· students and community

· and, most critically, students and ideas.

Connections are central.

Derived from the Latin, connectere, meaning to bind to, connections have a constellation of powerful root words, like annex, net, ply, and know. These words form a constellation that displays a bias towards action, something is happening!

· Teachers throw out a net, gathering a wide range of student interests.

· Teachers use various knots to secure the subject material to each learning style.

· Teachers annex community elders & experts relevant to the classroom learning.

· Teachers form a plywood, creating layer upon layer of active learning.

These well-worn tools build effective connections with your students, and powerful learning currents for each of them. Thereby, assuring vital connectivity. In learning, when connections surge, networks are created, and there exists an interactive ecosystem.

Inquiry for Students

What do you want?

Every student has a world they would like to create for themselves. When you listen and discover what it is, it becomes very important to the design and unfolding of learning.

1. What do you want?

2. What don’t you want?

3. How do you want school (class) to be?

4. What are your goals?

5. What do you want to achieve?

6. What does doing your best on an assignment or project, look like?

7. What does a great day at school look like?

8. If you could change one thing, what would it be?

9. How do you want to be treated?

10. Who respects you?

11. Who makes you feel important?

What are you doing?

Gather the student’s perceptions of their own actions. Often, these questions are deployed when the student is not happy with their work.

1. What are/were you thinking?

2. How are/were you feeling?

3. What choices did you make?

4. Did they work for you?

5. Do you have a plan?

6. Were there any steps you skipped?

7. Are there any steps you repeated?

8. What have you done differently than you did before?

9. Describe your studying process.

10. How did you prepare for the presentation?

Evaluate the moment

Non-critically help the student evaluate whether or not what they are doing is working well for them.

1. Are you satisfied with the results?

2. What part of the results are you satisfied with?

3. What part of the results are you not satisfied with?

4. Is this what you hoped would happen?

5. Is this your best work?

6. Is this your best effort?

7. How is what you are doing helping you get what you want?

8. How is what you are doing not helping you get what you want?

9. What is most important for you right now?

Plan

What else can you do? Whether they have a plan or you coach them into a plan, work with the student to build options that best fit for them.

1. What are your options?

2. What steps will you need to accomplish your goal?

3. What skills will you need to accomplish your goal?

4. What knowledge will you need to accomplish your goal?

5. What resources do you need?

6. What kind of feedback do you want?

7. How will you know if your plan is successful?

8. What won’t help you accomplish your plan or goal?

9. How can I BEST help you?

Product Ideas

What does it look like when you are done? There are literally hundreds of ideas for projects! Here is a quick 100. Add to it every time another project idea becomes a completed project!

1. Design an advertisement

2. Curate and hang an art exhibit

3. Create a batik

4. Draw a blueprint

5. Design a board game, card game

6. Do a charcoal drawing

7. Create a detailed chart/diagram

8. Perform a choral reading

9. Present a Coin Collection

10. Make a collage

11. Illustrate a book

12. Write a letter to a friend, to a relative, to the editor

13. Write a short story

14. Draw a comic series

15. Write a computer program

16. Build a crossword puzzle

17. Design and sew a costume

18. Choreograph a Dance

19. Design and conduct a debate

20. Keep a journal/diary

21. Build a diorama

22. Set up a display/demonstration/performance

23. Direct a skit/play/musical

24. Perform a monologue

25. Design sets for a play

26. Write an essay, poem, fable, fairy tale, haiku, children’s book, limericks, newspaper article, novella, sonnet, textbook, field manual, magazine article, repair instructions, cookbook, sci-fi story, report, pamphlet, guidebook, biography

27. Record a family tree

28. Make a film/video

29. Design a greeting card

30. Fund and invite a guest speaker

31. Give a lecture

32. Tell a story aloud to children

33. Design a teacher’s lesson plan

34. Create and build a scale drawing and model

35. Draw a map and legend

36. Create and hang a mobile

37. Design and paint a community mural

38. Create a museum exhibit

39. Compose a piece of music

40. Broadcast the news

41. Create an oil/acrylic painting

42. Design a bulletin board

43. Conduct an interview

44. Hold a press conference

45. Write a TV series

46. Research and write a new law

47. Make a joke book

48. Design a product package

49. Perform a pantomime

50. Create a photo essay

51. Take and develop black and white photographs

52. Make a poster

53. Put on a puppet show

54. Perform and record a radio theater

55. Do Reader’s Theater

56. Create a scrapbook

57. Create a sculpture

58. Do silk-screening

59. Do Stitchery

60. Conduct a survey

61. Record a song, chant, natural sounds, etc.

62. Construct a terrarium

63. Build furniture (wood, cardboard, trees, plastics, etc)

64. Create a timeline

65. Design a travel brochure

66. Make a documentary

67. Design a video simulation

68. Create a watercolor painting

69. Put on a fashion show

70. Sew clothing

71. Reupholster a chair

72. Do colored pencil drawings

73. Publish a magazine

74. Create a blog

75. Start an organization

76. Design a website

77. Create bumper stickers

78. Build a (you name it!)

79. Host an athelectic competition

80. Create jewelry

81. Clean a park, river, sidewalk, windows

82. Take action to make a place better

83. Cook an international dinner

84. Sew a flag

85. Make wallpaper

86. Learn a musical instrument

87. Make candy

88. Start a band

89. Construct a toy or a puzzle

90. Recite a famous speech

91. Reenact an event

92. Make a uniform

93. Make your own tools

94. Bake a pie/cake/cookies

95. Put on a cooking show

96. Hold a sale

97. Learn a language

98. Make pizza from scratch

99. Go fishing

100. Talk story

Learning Models

A. Place-based Learning: Promotes student learning that is rooted in what is local—the unique history, environment, culture, economy, literature, and art of a particular place. Learning, rooted in place, is a way of thinking about how young people learn, with whom, and about what. It is not a program, nor a pre-made curriculum, nor a prescription – rather a pathway.

B. Team Learning: 5-8 students acquire information and concepts then engage as teams to solve a problem and work on tasks till completion. Teacher is facilitative and Socratic. Content is taught through skill workshops, lecture, seminar, and adjunct. Teams function as cohort group.

C. Project-based Learning: Students ‘voice and choice’ initiate an aggregated interest that forms the central project thesis. Teacher facilitates project progression whether individual or small group. Information and concepts are learned along the way of the project progression through skill workshops, lecture, seminar, and adjunct.

D. Apprentice/Internship Learning: Learner is working with an expert to perform work in the field at an acceptable level. Scaffolding experience from job-shadow to self-directed immersion is critical. Teacher is coach and supplies content and skill affirmation as needed.

E. Problem-based Learning: Students are presented with a problem BEFORE they have studied all the relevant concepts. Usually asks for teachers to coach and mentor the groups. Students dive into knowledge acquisition to solve problem, teacher as selective skill workshops, lecture, seminar, and adjunct.

F. Inquiry Learning: sStudents/teachers engage an inquiry scenario that leads to a problem/performance/demonstration that is undertaken by the student’s team and assisted by a facilitator. Teacher often has to deliver a depth of knowledge instruction PRIOR to the inquiry scenario – build the smarts first. Scenario becomes the application effort.

G. Adventure-based Learning: Students are engaged with physical pursuits that engage challenging team-oriented problems often in natural outdoor environments. Teacher acts as guide, facilitator, and depending upon the length of experience – instructor, establishing the range of skill acquisition for the particular adventure scenario.

H. Case Study Learning: Used by Medical Colleges and other Professional Pathways as an immersion into real life scenarios – problem solving with others.

Inquiry for Parent Conferences

Learn about your student’s family and how/when/why you can help!

1. What type of learning experience is best for your child?

2. How would you like to see your child perform academically?

3. How would you like your child’s behavior to be?

4. How do you imagine your child’s future?

5. What are several teacher characteristics that best support your child?

6. What do you think about your child’s academic performance?

7. What do you say or do when your child tells you there has been a problem at school?

8. What do you think about your child’s behavior at school? at home?

9. What is your child’s daily after school routine?

10. How do you support your child’s education?

11. Is the support helping him/her do better at school?

12. Is there anything I can offer to help with that support?

13. What help do you need to get started?

14. What is your child’s daily after school routine?

KNOWLEDGE Menu

Factual Knowledge

The basic elements students must know to be acquainted with a discipline or solve problems in it.

Conceptual Knowledge

The interrelationships among the basic elements within a larger structure that enable them to function together.

Procedural Knowledge

How to do something, methods of inquiry, and criteria for using skills, algorithms, techniques, and methods.

Meta-cognitive Knowledge

Knowledge of cognition in general as well as awareness and knowledge of one's own cognition.

Six Steps in all Place-based Projects

Remember

Retrieve relevant knowledge from long-term memory.

Understand

Construct meaning from instructional messages, including oral, written, and graphic communication.

Apply

Carry out or use a procedure in a given situation

Analyze

Break material into constituent parts and determine how parts relate to one another and to an overall structure or purpose.

Evaluate

Make judgements based on criteria and standards.

Create

Put elements together to form a coherent or functional whole; reorganize elements into a new pattern or structure.

Learning Concepts

“What are we going to do with what we know?”

Achieve

Action

Actualize

Appropriate Use

Assess

Calculate

Classify

Combine

Compose

Conclude

Construct

Describe

Differentiate

Execute

Experiment

Explain

Interpret

List

Order

Plan

Predict

Rank

Summarize

Tabulate

Social-Emotional & Communication Learning Objectives

1. To provide a forum for success experiences for each student through group participation by talking and listening and following along with others.

2. To reinforce a positive self-‐concept: “What I have to say is acceptable and worthwhile.”

3. To build community involvement – a listening, trusting, and caring relationship between teacher and student, and among students.

4. To learn the process of respectful interaction.

5. To encourage responsibility within the group.

6. To create, and maintain an open, trusting atmosphere for learning.

7. To provide opportunities for insightful, creative, critical, and divergent thinking.

8. To furnish a channel for relevancy through discussion of subjects interesting and exciting to students.

9. To build communication skills, listening, verbal fluency within the group, and oral language development.

Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Outcomes

· Self-awareness

· Self-management

· Social Awareness

· Relationship Skill

· Responsible Decision making

SEL Competencies Stated as GROUP OUTCOMES

Responsible Decision-making:

· We value building an effective collaborative

· We collaboratively problem-solve to get things done.

· We workas a collaborative to reach creative solutions.

· We bring our individual talents and skills alive with others.

Self-Awareness: Idea/Insight/Involvement Producing

· We remain non-judgmental when discussing others’ viewpoints.

· We are better working together than as individuals, leveraging one another’s strengths and mitigating our weaknesses.

· We appreciate how diverse ideas create unique opportunities.

Social Awareness: Caring about others

· We listen and engage our full attention to one another.

· We care for each other as our fellow students care for us.

· We know our strengths and limitations, and help others build strengths and engage limitations in a caring and positive manner.

Self-Management: Systems that Sustain individual growth

· We check-in with one another on daily basis.

· We look for ways to increase our physical and emotional health.

· We identify problems and analyze situations to our benefit.

Relationship Skills: Conflict and Difference Resolution

· We identify and successfully navigate conflict and critical conversations.

· We take collective ownership of problems and do not “pass the buck”.

· We make constructive social choices about our social interactions.

Remote Lesson Template

5 MINUTES

* Set the lesson.

AEI. What attention, excitement, interest is bringing the students into the work? Video or Story or Sharing

10 MINUTES

Lesson ingredients

* Connect to prior knowledge.

* Why does it matter?

* Visual Tool as an organizer or affirmation or clarity of instructions

Implementation Variables

* Use your chatroom for notes, questions, I wonders, etc.

* Stay in the time buckets for the lesson

35 MINUTES

Student Practice/Learning Lab

* Remote Learning is best when there is Practice and Experiential and Conversation and Movement

* This is the heart of the lesson – design well.

10 MINUTES

Meta-cognitive

* Debrief and what’s next?

* 100% chat/cards/oral/visual

* Next steps in 3 items or less – keep it simple!

3 MINUTES

Closure

* Gesture, word-phrase, big card visual

* One at a time

* Small group identifier

* All at once

INQUIRY

INQUIRY will drive learning forward.

Agree / Disagree

• Has anyone else had a similar . . .?

• Who has a different . . .?

Clarification

• I'm not sure I understand . . .?

• Tell me more about . . .?

• Do you see gaps in my reasoning?

• Are you taking into account something different from what I have considered?

Support Questions

• Can you give us an example of . . .?

• Where in the story . . .?

• What would be a good reason for . . .?

• What is some evidence for . . .?

Cause and Effect

• Why do you think that happened?

• How could that have been prevented?

• Do you think that would happen that way again? Why?

• What are some reasons people . . .?

Compare / Contrast

• How are __________ and _______ alike?

• How are __________ and _______ different?

• What is that similar to?

• Can you think of why this feels different than . . .?

• How does this (poem, book, incident, etc.) remind you of . . .?

Benefits / Burdens

• What are some of the reasons this wouldn't (would) be a good idea?

• Would anyone like to speak to the opposite side?

• Those are some reasons this would work; what reasons might it not work?

Point of View / Perspective

• How might she/he have felt . . .?

• What do you think he/she was thinking when . . .?

• He might not like that, but can you think of someone who would?

• _____________ has expressed a different opinion. Are there others?

• Do you have a different interpretation?

• Do you have different conclusions?

• How did you arrive at your view?

Structure / Function

• If that was the goal, what do you think about . . (the action, reaction)?

• What were her/his choices of how to . . .?

• Why was she/he doing that? (Reply gives reason) What do you think of that approach?

• What better choices could he/she have made?

• What rules would we need to make sure . . .?

Counter example

• Would that still happen if . . . ?

• What might have made the difference?

Different Situation

• Can you describe a situation that would . . .?

• Suppose ________________. Would that still be true? Why or why not?

Solicit Questions

• What are some things that you wonder about?

• What would you like to know about?

• Are there questions we should remember now?

Personal Experience

• What would you do in that situation?

• Has anything like that ever happened to you?

• In what way are you alike or different from . . .?

Place-based Learning Project-based Learning

Place-based Learning Project-based Learning

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Get in Touch!

Get in Touch!

Place-based Learning

"The Best Tools for Lesson Design." - Wisconsin Teacher